


What a Scar Shows

by tjmystic



Series: Birthday Fics [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, criminal minds au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjmystic/pseuds/tjmystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Communications Liaison Belle French talks with Special Agent Nick Gold after a hard case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a Scar Shows

What A Scar Shows  
Birthday Fic #9

Rating: PG-13

fuckingnamechoise prompted: Criminal Minds AU, DavidRossi!Gold & JJ!Belle

Author’s Note: I’ll gladly continue this if you want me to - I ended up liking these character variations more than I thought I would. Oh, and for those of you who don’t know, Rossi and JJ aren’t actually a couple, so I had to tweak a few details to make this prompt fit :)

 

“Here ya go, Arch,” Belle smiled, swabbing Archie’s brow with a damp cloth.

Their resident genius smiled at her gratefully and nuzzled into her touch. Gold couldn’t really blame him - if he were Doctor Hopper, he’d be looking for some reassurance that the world wasn’t shit, too. 

“D’you need anything else? I could stay up and read to you, if you wanted.”

“It’s cool, Belle,” Whale interrupted, clapping one hand on Hopper’s shoulder and holding Ruby’s face in the other. ”Me and my baby girl can take over for awhile.”

“It’s totally fine, Belle, you need a break,” Ruby agreed, talking a mile a minute. Her pixelated face nodded jerkily on the computer screen. 

The communications liaison gave both of them a relieved little sigh, patting Whale on the arm and managing to hug Archie at the same time. “Okay. But just call if you need anything, alright?”

Ruby waved her off. ”Oh hush, sweetcheeks, we’ve got it under control.”

Belle smiled and sauntered off down the aisle of the jet, gratefully taking Mulan’s hand when she offered it. Agent Fa, much like Doctor Hopper, owed her life to the little blonde PR woman. Gold almost choked when her pencil skirt rode up her legs - proper as she was, she ought to know how to bend over without flashing the curve of her arse.

“See anything interesting?”

Gold cold feel David’s eyes on him, but he staunchly refused to meet the hard stare. Nolan was in charge, always had been always would be, but he had to abide by the same rules as the rest of them. And “no profiling your teammates” sat at the very top of that list. 

“No,” he answered, pretending that Nolan was talking about the case file laid open in front of him (and not the blonde he was imagining was laid open in front of him). ”We finally caught one with minimal loose-ends. We stopped the bastard before he could devolve into mass abduction - we’ll never get those three lives back, but it’s better than three-hundred, I suppose.”

He could tell that Nolan was about to press the other issue - the less important one - again, but Belle, as always, was there to save the day.

“You two talking about me?” she teased. Or tried to, anyway - Gold thought she sounded old and tired. 

“No, but we should’ve been. You did good work today, Belle,” David commended, voice serious as always. ”If you hadn’t found out about the basement, Archie might be -“

“Thanks, Nolan,” she cut him off. Gold could see the panic in her eyes, the fear of what might happen if David finished his sentence. He wanted to throttle the man and hold her all at once. But Lord knew that couldn’t make it better. Nothing would - they’d almost lost someone else today.

Nolan’s cell skittered across the table, vibrating as it warbled, “I’m wishing (I’m wishing), for the one I love.”

Their boss didn’t smile, but his eyes took on an almost sparkling quality. “My lady fair awaits,” he muttered sarcastically, lifting the phone to his ear. ”But seriously, Belle - good job today. Oh, hey honey. How’s Emma?”

Belle smiled as Nolan marched off, gurgling in baby talk to his little girl and promising his wife he’d be home in time for supper. Their relationships were strained, to say the least, but David somehow seemed to make it work. Gold wished that he could glean some hope from that fact, but, as usual, it didn’t work. Three failed marriages, and in a few years he’d die old and alone because he couldn’t make the first move for a new romance. Even when it was sitting right in front of him.

Gold clinked two shot glasses onto the table before him, followed by a bottle of whiskey wrapped in brown paper. He’d been right to think they’d need a drink after this case.

He filled up the first and pointed it to Belle before downing it.

“Slàinte mhor a h-uile là a chi ‘s nach fhaic.”

Belle laughed, barely a breath due to her exhaustion. ”And that means…?”

“A toast to the victor,” he groused, pushing the whiskey bottle towards the little blonde. She didn’t need to know the verbatim translation. ”Nolan’s right - we couldn’t have beaten this guy without you.”

“It wasn’t just me, Gold,” she corrected, faintly blushing. ”You guys did most of the work. I mean, you were the one who noticed that ‘Stay Out of the Basement’ was missing from his R.L. Stine collection.”

He shrugged. ”That was always Bae’s favorite. To be honest, I think that’s the only book of Stine’s I know. Must’ve read it to the boy fifty times a week when he was six.”

Belle giggled, a bit of her usual humor returning to her haunted face. ”It was my favorite, too. Not when I was six, obviously - I was too scared to read a grown-up horror novel, so I stuck with Goosebumps.” Her laughter fled as quickly as it had arrived. ”I’m not sure I’ll be able to read it again after the week we’ve had, though. Thinking you can turn people into plants, Gold? That’s a whole different level of insane and disturbed.”

She downed her whiskey in one go, face contorting at the bitter tang of it. 

“And anyway, I wouldn’t have found that basement without Officer Gaston’s help. It was completely waterlogged by the hurricane.”

Gold shivered, too, but not because of the unsub’s diabolical madness or the storm that had wiped out millions of people. Those were thoughts for later, when he lay alone in his bed, unable to sleep for the fear. 

“I was going to mention that,” he grumbled, trying and dismally failing to keep the jealousy out of his voice. ”You seemed to be getting awfully friendly with our dear contact.” He poured them both another shot. ”Guilaume Gaston? Very French, don’t you think?”

“Very Cajun. But if he was French, it would suit me just fine - Agent French with a French agent. Sounds like a fairytale.”

They glared dryly at each for long moments, never blinking, shot glasses raised to mouth level. Gold imagined he could hear the theme music to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” playing in the distance. But of course, she caved first.

“You don’t have to worry about me leaving the team any time soon, Gold,” she promised. ”Especially not for him. He was cute, but nothing special. Hardly worth skipping out on you guys for.”

He smirked at her as she lifted the glass to her lips. He should’ve known she wouldn’t be interested to that dim-wit. His Belle… Agent French, was too good to settle for something like that.

The glass clanged to the table, just quiet enough that no one but Gold heard it. ”Damn!” Belle hissed. 

“What’s wrong, French?” he asked worriedly, yanking her hand towards him. His eyes narrowed when he saw the giant gash on her palm, now bubbling with the droplets of whiskey she’d accidentally spilled on it. She must’ve gotten it when the unsub tried to escape - he’d turned desperate at the end and started throwing broken vials at them.

“How did you not notice this?”

Belle shrugged. ”I was looking after Archie. I guess I just got distracted.”

Gold huffed and pulled out a cotton handkerchief, dabbing it lightly in his whiskey and then pouring a large portion of water over top. He pulled Belle’s hand closer, intending to clean the wound for her, but she took the towel from his hand and dabbed it for herself. He thought he hid his hurt at the gesture rather well. 

“It doesn’t look too deep at least. Better than Archie’s cuts, anyway. We should just stick a warning label on his forehead,” Gold muttered, downing another shot of whiskey. ”FRAGILE, most likely to be abducted, do not touch.”

Belle whacked him with the wet napkin, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. 

“What’s this been, Nick, the fifth time this year?” She shook her head and took a small sip of her own liquor. ”It’s getting ridiculous. I’m starting to wonder if he’s looking to get kidnapped. If maybe he wants -“

Gold banged his shot glass onto the table. ”Belle, stop.”

One of her eyebrows shot up in surprise. ”What did you say?”

“I said stop,” he repeated. ”French, you can’t make yourself responsible for his life. If he needs help, David and I will - “

“No, no. You didn’t call me ‘French’. You called me Belle.”

He said nothing. No matter what he did at this point, it would only confirm his slip. At least with silence, he could bear the burden gracefully. 

“It looks like it’ll scar,” he murmured instead, dropping her hand to the linoleum. ”Sorry about that.”

She cocked her head to the side, analyzing him more intently than any sociopath he’d ever interviewed. ”What do you think a scar shows?” she finally asked, swirling her last shot of whiskey with her free hand. 

Gold knew where she was going immediately. An honest-to-God grin on his face, he answered, “Scars show us where we have been, they do not dictate where we are going.”

Belle positively beamed at him. He felt like he’d won the Olympic gold medal.

“You remembered,” she laughed.

“How could I not?” he mumbled. ”You told me that the first time you saw me with my cane.”

He didn’t tell her that that thought circled around his mind 24/7, along with a mental picture he carried of his Bae. When things got too rough, when he felt like bailing out, they gave him hope. They were the only people who could - not even his team, remarkable people that they were, were capable of reminding him that not everything was unsubs and hate and destruction. Ever since the gorgeous little blonde had greeted him in his office, the only one to offer him a warm welcome on his first day, he’d longed for her. And he’d never longed for much of anything, or anyone for that matter. None of his first three wives - the first arranged, the next two mistakes - could hold a candle to his beautiful Belle. But maybe he could, one day. One night. Not literally, of course - he knew he wasn’t anything to look at with his gnarled body and too-long hair. But in the dark of a bedroom - his or hers, he didn’t care - maybe he’d be allowed to bathe her with the light of a snow-white tallow stick. 

Belle yawned, interrupting his sweet musings. Well, maybe not sweet. She considered him a boss, an acquaintance, maybe a friend if he was lucky. ”Lover” or even just “love” didn’t exist in her mental labels for him.

“Go on, French,” he commanded, ignoring the exhaustion in his own voice. If he started thinking about being tired, he’d likely start thinking about sleeping next to her, and God only knew where ideas like that would lead him. ”You ought to get some rest before we land.”

Belle searched his eyes for another moment, but, obviously not finding what she was looking for, she nodded and gave him her glass.

“I’ll get right on that.”

She scooted herself up from the bench, headed for seat to sleep on instead. Two steps away from him, she turned around and winked, saying, “Great health and every good blessing to you, too.”

Belle must’ve noticed his total shock, but she continued to shimmy down the aisle, throwing over her shoulder at him, “You forget that you gave me a Gaelic dictionary for my birthday, Nick.”

Nick. She’d called him Nick. 

He poured another shot without thinking. Halfway to his mouth, though, he threw it on the table, whispering, “Fuck it” as he emptied the rest of the bottle down his throat.


End file.
